Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice....

SHAME ON ME!

If you haven't paid any attention (and because it's hockey, chances are you haven't), recently one of the NHL's biggest stars scored the longest tenured contract in league history. Ilya Kovalchuck signed an unprecedented 17, that's right, SEVENTEEN, year contract for $102 million dollars with the New Jersey Devils. In all fairness, the guy is absolutely ridiculous on the ice. He possesses a combination of size, speed, skill, and the natural ability to bury pucks in the back of the net that so few are gifted with. He, in every sense of the word (as a 27 year old with 338 goals already to his name), deserves a contract that is near the highest in the league. But to blatantly disregard integrity and abuse a loop hole such as this is both embarrassing for him and the Devils franchise.

After the lockout, the league didn't just come back on a shitty outdoor (oh the irony!) network, which allowed the rest of the country's major sports team to laugh in their faces, it actually came out with the intentions of financial stability. This meant a salary cap, the urge for reasonable contracts so the league could profit, and a responsibility to maintain the integrity of a well run league so that something like this never happened again.

Let me clarify the salary cap rules really quick:

Each team would be allowed only to spend a certain amount of money per year on the roster (simple, yes i know). Contracts would work as an average amount of money divided by the amount of years, no matter front loaded, back loaded, or evenly distributed. For example, if a player signed for 5 years and $50 million dollars, his salary cap "hit" would be $10 million dollars for each year even if he received $20 million the first, $15 million the second, $10 million the third, and only $2.5 million the final two seasons. Make sense? It gave some flexibility for clubs to spread evenly the cap hit as to maintain a more reasonable financial stability.

Now, let us check how this was almost instantly abused....

The first time we saw this was when a certain goalie, let's call him Rick D. .... no no.... that's too obvious..... R. DiPietro!, signed an unheard of 15 year $67.5 million offer with the team which was both mocked for absurdity as well as confusing for most hockey fans. Why would he sign for 15 years at only $4.5 million per season? What if inflation effects the value of the dollar? What if he didn't last the life of the contract? ....Oh, how naive were we.... I feel like I just watched Sammy Sosa smash a ball 1,000ft during an all-star game with a wood painted aluminum bat as his eyes bulged out further than Wiley Coyote just before the anvil hits. Perhaps it was because he was just 23, perhaps it was because he was a franchise caliber goalie (and the team would love to hold on to him forever, literally), or perhaps it was because we thought he was getting that spread evenly. Well, turns out it was for the same exact reasons outlined in the NHL's rejection of Kovalchuck's latest contract.

Don't mess with the NHL!

This is the best run sports league on this hemisphere (I only hold it to this side of the planet because of the nearly instant ban of vuvuzelas by the English Premier League, a league I am learning to love more than the any...). Never has there been such a pro-active league that not only does the right thing for the sport, but does the right thing to ensure fairness across the league. Sure the NFL has a "salary cap" but when was the last time you heard a team go anywhere near it? They abuse the system most of all by giving "signing bonuses" that are 80% of their contract while paying them pennies on the dollar as "salary". Even if the NFL took offense to this ridiculous abuse of the system, it'd take negotiations with the player's association, the owners, and likely wouldn't even be implemented until a year or two later. The NHL? Try two days! Immediately the league said "I'll be DAMNED if I'm fooled again!" and REJECTED it!

Kovalchuck had rejected a contract extension with the awful Atlanta Thrashers (yes, they have a team) which would have made him the 2nd highest paid player in the league (details: 12 years $101 million) which, at the time, seemed both honorable and selfless. He gets nearly identical money with New Jersey, but it's for an absurd amount of years. New Jersey planned on giving him $95 million of the $102 million over the first 10 years (reasonable), but spread out the $7 million over the next 7 years (um, yeah he's not Dan Carcillo....) all the while keeping his cap hit at a nice and easy $6 million.

Well the NHL will not be fooled into shaming themselves.